Memento Mori
by Akuma-No-Seija
Summary: A year can change many things, yet in some ways, many things remain the same. Yes, the demon lays him down to sleep, he prays to him his soul to keep, and if he dies before he wakes, he prays to the demon his soul to take... Rated for slash/language/gore.
1. Prologue

_A/N: 'Tis meh very first Kuroshitsuji (Black Butler) fanfic! Though this is only the prologue, and though I stayed up 'till two in the morning writing it on a Sunday night after repeatedly going to and fro from an air-port many miles away, I hope you find it within yourself to enjoy my ridiculous words. I managed to slap in some time to do research (maybe ten minutes of it! XP) and if you have any questions, concerns, or tips, let me know. ^^ _

_And do try to ignore any run-ons and excessive metaphors; you may dislike them, but I've written like this since the beginning and such a practice is hard to stop so abruptly. **That said, I advise you to read this very slowly and please do not take a single comma for grant it!** And I apologize for the dullness of this prologue... but I can assure you that, in honor of Halloween, the suspense of this story will rise to a lengthy height... It's probably one of my more proper sounding ones.__Be prepared for Pluto cuteness, Mey-rin epic nosebleeds, and Grell... being Grell... -_-' Some things never change. Poor, poor Sebastian... and to add to that, he is now stuck as Ciel's butler for eternity. Mercy for a demon... Hmph. o.O_

_What HAS changed however... is the fact that, no, I've not watched the whole second season. I just barely finished watching the first because YouTube went whacko on me. -_-' But this story is meant to take place two years later (or, rather, a year, considering Ciel's birthday came in the first season, so I imagine he would have turned 13) when Ciel is 14. _

_P.S. If you find this metomorphizing into a CielxSebastian story, I gravely apologize... but for me, I find it rather irresistable. ^^' _

___Memento mori i_s a Latin phrase translated as "Remember your mortality", "Remember you must die" or "Remember you will die" - literally " [in the future] remember to die", since "memento" is a future imperative of the 2nd person, and mori is a deponent infinitive. It names a genre of artistic creations that vary widely from one another, but which all share the same purpose: to remind people of their own mortality. The phrase has a tradition in art that dates back to antiquity. 

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_**Memento Mori**- Prologue_

_'Twas the night 'afore the morn',_

_and astrewn throughout the mansion,_

_an ear-shattering shriek reached the ears of our butler, the demon,_

_Sebastian..._

_His gentle knocking remained unanswered, _and he stood at the slightest hesitation before his white-gloved hand reached out and twisted the bedroom's door-knob.

The door swung open with a creak; the noise made akin to that of a cat whose tail had been stepped upon.

It was like coming into the cold marbled room of a mausoleum after the moon had set. Complete darkness, not a hint of the silver world outside, the windows tightly shut, the chamber a tomb world where no sound from the great city would penetrate. The room was not empty.

He listened.

The little mosquito-delicate dancing hum in the air, the electrical murmur of a hidden wasp snug in its special pink, warm nest. The music was almost loud enough so he could follow the tune.

He felt his soft grin slide away, melt, fold over and down on itself like tallow skin, like the stuff of a fantastic wildfire burning too long, and now collapsing, and now blown out.

Darkness.

He was not consoled. He was not content. He said the words to himself. He recognized this as a true state of affairs. He wore his happiness like a mask, and the Devil himself had run across the freshly-cut lawn _with_ the mask, and there was no way of going to knock on the gateway to Hell and ask for it back. It never even existed in the first place, though, now, did it? And, besides that, the demon in disguise was not permitted to return to his heartland 'till the "contract", so said, _"expired"._ Wait... the contract had expired, hadn't it? Because he had failed. No, now the contract was eligible... for _eternity! _There was some form of concience that told him that he could very well take _care_ of that contract himself, whether he had failed the first time or not, and he couldn't think of a reason why he hadn't already.

But that was inevadably beyond him, of course. After all, he was simply one hell of a butler. And he was just now really beginning to actually become _fond_ of it.

Without striking a match or catching light to a candle, Sebastian Michaelis imagined how this room would look: The young master stretched on the bed, uncovered and cold, like a body diplayed on the lid of a tomb, his eyes fixed to the ceiling by invisible threads of steel, immovable. And he would have forgotten all about his terrible, nightly screaming, and would be pondering, pondering, pondering, pondering, pondering- until his thoughts were coming in. Coming in on the shore of his unsleeping mind. The room was indeed, empty.

Every night the waves came in and bore him off on their great tides of sound, floating him, wide-eyed, towards the early morn'. There had been no night in the last four years that Master Ciel had not swum in that sea, had not gladly gone down in it for the umpteenth time.

The room was cold, but, nonetheless, Sebastian felt he could not breathe. He did not wish to open the drapes and open the French windows, for he did not want the moon to come into the room. So, with the feeling of a man who would die in the next hour for lack of air, he felt his way back towards the door and back towards the hallow corridor in utter silence, presuming, without a doubt, that his lord had found rest.

An instant before his foot hit the object on the floor he knew he would hit such an object. His feet, sensing vibrations ahead, received back echoes of the small barrier across its path even as the foot swung.

His foot kicked. The object gave a dull clink and slid off into the darkness.

He stood very straight and listened to Ciel on the dark bed in the completely featureless night.

The breath coming out of nostrils was so faint it stirred only the furthest fringes of life; a small leaf, a black feather, a single fibre of hair.

He did not want outside light. He pulled out his igniter, felt the raven etched on its silver disc, gave it a flick...

Two moonstones looked up at him in the light of his small hand-held fire; two pale moonstones buried in the creek of clear water over which the life of the world ran, not touching them.

"S-Sebastian...?"

"My lord."

Ciel's face was like a snow-covered island upon which rain might fall, but it felt no rain; over which clouds might pass their morning shadows, but he felt no shadow. There was only the song of echoed silence and his eyes all frosted glass, and his breath going in and out, softly, faintly, in and out of his small nostrils, and he not caring whether it came or went, went or came.

The object Sebastian had sent tumbling with his foot now glinted under the edge of the bed. The small crystal bottle of sleeping tablets which earlier today had been filled with thirty capsules and which now lay uncapped and empty in the light of the tiny flare.

"The pills the doctor prescribed you... You have already emptied the bottle, my lord?"

"Oh, Sebastian, don't be daft. I wouldn't do that." Ciel mumbled sleepily, rubbing the silken sleeves of his night garments against his dry and tired eyes.

"The bottle is empty, young master."

"I wouldn't do a thing like that, you ridiculous Astaroth*. Why would I do a thing like that?" he said.

_Astaroth?_ thought Sebastian. _The old chap's just too pitiful. How dare he think to compare me to such an embarrassment to the Underworld?_

"Perhaps you took two pills and forgot, and took two more, and forgot again and took two more, and became so disorientated you kept right on until you had thirty or forty of them in you."

"Bloody hell, Sebastian," Ciel scoffed. "what would I want to go and do a stupid thing like that for?"

"I don't know." said the butler rather bluntly.

The young earl was quite obviously waiting for something more to be said, yet he was the one who broke the next moment of silence.

"I wouldn't do that." he uttered without emotion.

"Never in a billion years."

Sebastian cocked his head in confusion, his wispy ebony bangs falling over his scarlett gaze.

"Yes, sire. Whatever you say, my lord."

His igniter remaining lit, with its flame fluttering about in a burning, wavering dance to the light gods, Sebastian nodded and turned on a heel.

He managed to swiftly glide his way to the door with his coattails floating after him, before Ciel's quiet, trembling voice stopped him dead in his tracks.

"I... but I _had_ to."

Sebastian's eye-lids fell shut and he stood listening to his master's uneven breathing.

"Ah. The nighmares have returned, I'm presuming?"

"...Yes. They refuse to let me sleep, and so I overdosed and I..."

"Fancy a talk about it?"

Ciel paused. "No."

A lump formed in the fourteen year-old's throat, and he cradled his porcelain chin above his knees, grabbing hold of his white sheets and tangling himself all up in them.

"They've... worsened, however. So very violently, they have worsened! 'Tis not pleasant, Sebastian... And they grow frighteningly tiresome at the same time, but they are very much still too terrifying for me to even desire discussing them..."

Sebastian glanced back at his master with an expression one might call sympathy, one another might call a facade. He attempted yet another step towards his escape, but, alas, was yet again interrupted.

One of Ciel's large eyes- the misty violet one with its glowing pentagram* etched in its interior- came to rest on him pleadingly with the other one- the sapphire eye- hidden behind bangs composed of smoky black strands of his satin hair.

"Sebastian?"

"Yes, my lord?"

"Might you tuck me in?"

"Yes, young master. Of course."

And the butler found himself once again at his master's bedside, tenderly taking the folds of several blankets in his careful grasp and pulling them over and tucking them under Ciel's fragile, tiny body. The boy flashed him a quick look of gratefulness, but the second Sebastian noticed it, it was gone and Ciel's lips had drawn back into their trademark frown.

His hands still resting upon the small earl's upper ribcage, Sebastian could- even through his thick, white gloves- feel the small body before him was shivering and covered in a cold sweat. And he was confused. Why ever were humans so terrified of silly old nightmares? He considered them very wonderful things!

Ciel's hands grabbed at the blanket and he tugged it up to cover his mouth, his jaw forcefully clamped shut so as not to give his teeth the freedom to chatter. The nightmares, the nightmares, oh! They rolled in like great thunderstorms in the very midst of his slumber and horrors gushed from every corner of his mind. Flashbacks bombarded him as such an immense strike of burning, blue lightning and setting him ablaze, the thunder following it at such a volume that his bones were nearly shaken from their tendons; he felt his jaw vibrate, his eyes wobble in his head. He was a victim of third-degree burns and a violent concussion. When it was all over, he felt like a man who had been thrown from a cliff, whirled in a centrifuge, and spat out over a waterfall that fell and fell into emptiness and emptiness and never- quite- touched- bottom- never- never- quite- no not quite- touched- bottom... and you fell so fast you didn't touch the sides either... never... quite... touched... anything.

The storm faded. The flames died.

"Would you like anything else, my lord?" Sebastian's voice murmured in such a gentleness Ciel had thought impossible for a demon to manage.

"Warm milk? Pudding? Krumpets? Porridge? A slice of chocolate fudge cake topped with the freshest dollop of whipped cream, perhaps?"

"No. No, Sebastian. Sweets are unneeded at such a time of the night. Just..."

"Yes, master?"

And Ciel, his eye-lids drooping due to his severe fatigue, slowly reached out to grasp Sebastian's hand and he held it close to him like a hot-water bottle, to soothe and melt the stubborn layer of ice that came to blanket his pale skin and engulfed, chilled, his very soul. His eyes, like tiny moons, waned shut as the next word escaped his thin lips in a whisper.

"Stay..."

A smile came to grace itself upon Sebastian's handsome face, and he knelt on a knee and craned his neck downwards, elegant fingers brushing against Ciel's soft, peach-fuzzy cheeks.

"Yes. Sleep well, young lord, for tomorrow... tomorrow... _tomorrow... __de nobis fabula narratur*."_

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A/N: Hope you enjoyed it! I have yet to write the first chapter and I'm hoping it will be up some time next week.

Definitions:

_Astaroth: demon of inquisitors and accusers_

_pentagram: Satanists use a pentagram with two points up, often inscribed in a double circle, with the head of a goat inside the pentagram. This is referred to as the Sigil of Baphomet. They use it much the same way as the Pythagoreans, as Tartaros literally translates from Greek as a "Pit" or "Void" in Christian terminology (the word is used as such in the Bible, referring to the place where the fallen angels are fettered). The Pythagorean Greek letters are most often replaced by the Hebrew letters לויתן forming the name Leviathan. Less esoteric LaVeyan Satanists use it as a sign of rebellion or religious identification, the three downward points symbolising rejection of the holy Trinity. YAY! This evil definition is brought to you by no other than Wikipedia! (lol just kidding! XP)_

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_de nobis fabula narratur: _About us is the story told; Thus, "their story is our story". Originally referred to the end of Rome's dominance. Now often used when comparing any current situation to a past story or historical event.

___Disownings: Kuroshitsuji and its characters belong to the fabulous Yana Toboso! aka... not me. :'( Sebby and Ciel wuv you guys! ^^_


	2. Chapter One:Forevermore!

_A/N: I am so lazy. I really am. I sat down last night and jolted down this first chapter on my iPhone. Because I'm lazy and have no life. And yet, I find myself absent from this site for God knows how long. XD So, here we go:_

_The first part of this is mostly conversation and overall, boring as Hell. I let the characters take over instead of descriptions in the first half- And then gave all the details to the second half. So it's very unevenly distributed. Sebastian is not at all included in the first chapter, which I know you guys are gonna think is a HUGE TRAGIC let-down. And guess what? It gets worse: Elizabeth and Ciel take their places as the stars of this chapter. What a fail. As unintresting as you may find it, I suggest you at least read this chapter... There are foreshadowings scattered in every sentence- and yes, even my lazy self checked said foreshadowings- that will prove vital at some point in this story. So this chapter is the so called, "Easter Egg" chapter... Kind of a second prologue, but, what the hell? I'm a difficult person; I like to hide things in my stories, no matter how much it irks my readers. Some writer I am. XD But remember- this will prove itself a SebastianxCiel story, so don't be discouraged at anything you might read! It doesn't exist! XD Or, rather, it does... Just... disregard anything I said. Never mind. -_-'_

_Oh, and btw: _

_MERRY CHRISTMAS! ^^ Please read and review! Please, please, please! XD_

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**Memento Mori- Ch.1: Forevermore!**

_"...And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting_

_On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;_

_And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon't that is dreaming_

_And the lamp-light o'er him streaming throws his shadow on_

_the floor;_

_And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the_

_floor_

_Shall be lifted- Nevermore!"_

_..._

The clock struck ten.

Deadening leaves blew over the grey and cloud-lit pavement in such a way as to make the girl who was moving there seem fixed to a sliding walk, letting the motion of the wind and the leaves carry her foward. Her head was half bent to watch her black boots stir the circling leaves. Her face was slender and milk-white, and in it was a kind of gentle hunger that touched over everything with tireless curiosity. It was a look, almost, or pale curiosity; the dark eyes were so fixed to the world that no move escaped them. Her dress was a soft rose and it whispered. Yes... He almost thought he had heard the motion of her hands as she walked, and the infinitely small sound now, the white stir, of her face turning as the rain of the morning and its ghostly mist thinned away, up to the dull skies, and she opened her tiny mouth and let the few drops stroll into it and down her throat.

She smiled when she saw Ciel.

"Hello!"

The trees overhead made a great sound of letting down their dry rain. The girl stopped and looked as if she might have a fainting spell from the sudden suprise of walking into him, but instead, she stood regaurding Ciel with eyes so bright and shining and alive that he felt he had said something quite wonderful. But he knew his mouth had only moved to say "hello" and then when she seemed hypnotized by the few falling drops of drizzle again, he spoke up once more.

"What are you up to now, Lizzie?"

"Oh, Ciel, the rain feels _brilliant!_ I love to walk in it!"

"I don't think I'd like that," he said.

"You might if you tried."

"I never have."

She licked her lips. "Rain even tastes good!"

"What do you do, go around trying everything once?" he asked.

"Sometimes twice," She looked at something in her left hand.

"What've you got there?" he said.

"I guess it's the last of the dandelions this year. I didn't think I'd find one on the lawn this late. Have you ever heard of rubbing it under your chin? Look."

She touched her chin with the flower, giggling.

"Why?"

"If it rubs off, it means I'm in love. Has it?"

He could hardly do anything else but look.

"Well?" she said.

"You're not yellow under there..."

"Oh, how splended! I knew it would rub off, because I love you very much, my Ciel. Let's try you now!"

"It won't work for me."

"Here." Before he could move she had planted the dandelion beneath his chin. He drew back and she laughed. "Hold still!"

She peered under his chin and frowned.

"Well?" he said.

"What a shame... You're... not in love with anyone..."

Ciel's eyes widened.

"Yes I am!"

"It doesn't show."

"I am; Very much in love!" He tried to conjure up a face to fit the words, but there was no face. "I am!"

"Oh, please don't look that way. It's not at all very cute."

"It's that dandelion," he said. "You've feathered it too lightly on your own face, I say! Why, you practically shoved it in mine! That's why it won't work for me."

"Of course, that must be it. Oh, now I've upset you, I can see that I have; I'm sorry, Ciel, really I am." She touched his elbow.

"No, no," he said quickly, "I'm all right."

"Well, I best be on my way now, so say you forgive me. I don't want you angry with me."

"I'm not angry. Upset, yes."

"Right. Well, I've got to go see my psychiatrist now. Mother makes me go. I make up things to say. He says I'm a regular onion! i keep him busy peeling away the layers."

"I'm inclined to believe that you need the psychiatrist," said Ciel.

"You don't mean that."

He took a deep breath and let it out, and at last said, "No, I don't mean that."

"The psychiatrist wants to know why I go out and hike around in the forests and watch the birds and collect butterflies. My mother did the very same when she was young, but he tells me that it's not a very lady-like thing to do, nevertheless. It's rather an insult to Mummy, being Marchioness and all, I should think. Anyway, I'll have to show you my collection someday. The butterflies I have captured are all quite lovely!"

"Good for you."

"They want to know what I do with my time. I tell them that sometimes I just sit and think. But I won't tell them of what. I've got them running. And sometimes, I tell them, I like to put my head back- like this- and let the rain fall into my mouth. It tastes just like the finest of white wines. You really should give it a go, Ciel."

"No, I-"

"You have forgiven me, haven't you?"

"Yes." He thought about it. "Yes, I have. God knows why; You're peculiar, you're aggravating, yet... you're incredibly easy to forgive... You say you're still only fifteen?"

"Well- in a few months, of course, yes."

"How odd... How strange. you're very different from the last time I've met with you, Liz- No, Lady Elizabeth."

"You've grown up in the past year yourself, Earl Phantomhive. Sometimes, though, you're so peculiar yourself that I even forget you hold such a position with all these ginormous responsibilities and such!"

Ciel stared at his fiancee with a befuddled expression engulfing his features.

"Yes, well, "Earl" is only some face-valued title in which I could care less about. You'd, uh... better run off to your appointment now," he said in reply, quickly so as not to find himself in further conversation.

Elizabeth couldn't help but snicker at this. "I suppose you're right, even though you made such a fuss over that silly old dandelion. Well, good-bye, my sweet Ciel!"

She started up her saunter. Then she seemed to remember something, and came back to look at him with wonder and curiosity gleaming in her emerald gaze.

"Now, before I really do leave, may I make you angry again?"

"Go ahead."

"Are you happy?" she said.

"Am I what?" he cried.

But she was gone- scampering in the golden sunbeams that had fought their way from out the thick grey clouds and were now waltzing about the pathway ever so gracefully. Now, only her tiny, rose-dressed figure was left as a silhouette, whispering, dwindling, farther and farther away from his very sight.

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"Happy! Of all the nonsense!"

He stopped his feigned laughter in a horrifying abruptness.

Then he laid his hand on the garden door, twisted it, let it know his touch. The door swung open then, of course, and he entered into the manor.

"Of course I'm "happy." What does she think? I'm not? Rubbish!" he said to the quiet rooms and vacant coridors. He stood looking up at the ventilator grille in one of the halls to his right and suddenly remembered that something lay hidden behind the grill, something that seemed to peer down at him now. He moved his eyes quickly away.

What a strange meeting on a strange morning. He remembered nothing like it save one afternoon a year agao when he had a very elongated and meticulous tete-a-tete with Sebastian and they had conversed...

Ciel shook his head and stared at a barren wall. Elizabeth's face was there, really quite striking in memory; astonishing, in fact. She had a very thin face like the dial of a small clock seen faintly in a dark room in the middle of the night, when you awaken to see the time, and the clock telling you the hour and the minute and the second with a murmured silence and glowing all-certainty, and knowing what it had to tell of the night passing swiftly on toward on furtehr darknessess- but moving also towards the sun.

Words Sebastian had once told him- perhaps a year ago, upon a certain occasion- rang throughout his wits:

"And the light shineth in the darkness, and the darkness comprehended is not."

"What?" asked Ciel of that other self, the subconscious idiot that ran babbling at times, quite independent of willpower, habit and conscience.

He glanced at the wall again. How like a mirror, too, her face. Impossible; For how many people did you know who refracted your own light to you? People were more often- he searced for a simile, found one in his tradgedies- flames, blazing away until they whiffed out; How rarely did other people's face take of you and throw back to you your own expression, your innermost trembling thought?

Once again, Sebastian's words thrusted themselves into his unfinished thoughts like some speeding freight train you never saw coming until it was too late.

"The image reflected in a picture is but an illusion. However, even if it is an illusion, wishing to hold onto it is one of the hollow dreams humans have."

"What? Wishing to...? How ridiculous."

What an incredible power of identification Lizzzie had; she was like the eager watcher of a marionette show, anticipating each flicker of an eye-lid, each gesture of his hand, each flick of a finger, the moment before it began. How long had they walked together? Three minutes? Five? Yet how large that time seemed now. How immense a figure she was on the stage before him; What a shadow she threw on the wall with her slender body. He felt that if his eye twitched, she might blink. And if the muscles in his jaw stretched imperceptibly, she would yawn long before he would.

His tired eyes shifted from the wall to the dull floor beneath him, the wavering light of the candle throwing yet another shadow on this floor;

"If you so wish," said it, "I shall accompany you until the very end. Even if the throne crumbles, and the shining crown rots away. Even if countless bodies pile up, there will I remain, upon the heap of carcasses, beside the little king who lies silently... Until I hear the final call."

Ciel's tiny frame shuddered violently as these words so seemingly seemed to manifest their own voice from out of even the farthest depths of his twisted mind. _I know_, he thought, _I know._

"For you, my "chessman," are my "might," my "hands and feet"... I alone will decide... I myself will choose... And for that, you shall become my "might". Yes... I know full well. But now simply, you must remember, that when then game of life- yes, even an immortal life- has met some form of its demise, the king and all his pawns go into the very same box... Unless, that is, one of them just so happens to get misplaced along the way... And for this there are no happy endings. Not ever. That is and has always been and shall be... _Forevermore!"_

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A/N: I really hope you guys enjoyed- even though I swear this will be THE most boring chapter you will read! XD I'm not the proudest of it, but what's done is done. So, please, I beg of you, review! ^^


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